Power-Plus

Agrowing appetite for lifestyle has resulted in another power-center recipe—one that includes, besides the usual big-box ingredients, a dash of entertainment and a splash of specialty lifestyle tenants and amenities.

Not that the tried-and-true version of the power center doesn’t still work. The big-box-anchored retail strip, with a side of specialty retail, is cemented in the suburban shopping landscape—albeit without the glamour of this emerging, power-plus model.

“Certainly, there are opportunities to add lifestyle components to power centers,” said Rosalind Schurgin, executive VP of Los Angeles-based Festival Cos., “provided you are in the right demographic market and that you have enough land area to create the critical mass required for lifestyle.”

Schurgin issues the caution because, at their very format core, power centers and lifestyle centers are diametrically opposed.

Power centers typically are convenience- and destination-driven, with roomy parking fields and an abundance of destination retailers. “When you think of lifestyle, however, it’s the complete opposite,” said Schurgin. “Lifestyle centers, which are ambience-rich, are often created to capture a lifestyle found mostly in larger, more affluent metropolitan areas. So if you put those two—power and lifestyle—together, you actually have very different objectives.”

But, added Schurgin, there are times when opposites attract. “If you’re in a vibrant suburb with fantastic demographics and an abundance of upwardly mobile families, and you have the necessary land area, why not create both? There’s no rule that says you can’t; combining power and lifestyle is more of an opportunity to be carefully pursued.”

The Maine Event

Combining power and lifestyle in a big way is Shoppes on Maine, a 570,000-sq.-ft. retail project in the growing community of Rochester, Minn. Opus Northwest will develop nearly 60 acres of this power center with lifestyle-center amenities. In addition to national anchors SuperTarget and Lowe’s, Shoppes on Maine will feature a new-to-market theater complex, Wehrenberg Theatres, as well as restaurants, upscale retailers, junior anchors and boutique shops. Amenities for this open-air retail center will include landscaped seating areas and walkways, ponds and waterfalls, making it an attraction for residents and visitors to Rochester’s growing south side.

In addition to the current development, there are approximately 35 acres of master-planned land for future development that will bring the total project to nearly 1 million sq. ft. of shops and restaurants at Shoppes on Maine.

Seven years ago, Festival developed a center in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, which abuts Glendale, that was an early model of this power-plus shopping center. Anchored by Best Buy and Costco, Franciscan Metro Center is a blend of bigbox power retail and lifestyle. “Accompanying the big-box retailers is an urban environment—situated in the front, along the street—made up of restaurants and specialty stores that appeal to that neighborhood and that lifestyle environment,” said Schurgin. “To us, it captured what is best in a market. This center worked from day one, and it has continued to maintain its position as one that has engraved itself into the fabric of a community.”

In the Festival pipeline is another power-lifestyle combination, this one on a proposed 80- acre site in the City of Huntington Park, Calif. “Here we are able to create a regional hub of power tenants while also adding an element of pedestrian street life,” Schurgin said

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